Capacitive touch interfaces are in use on an ever increasing number and variety of devices including tablet computers and smart phones. Conventional manual testing for capacitive touch interfaces may have been limited by the availability, accuracy, speed, and throughput of a skilled operator. Conventional manual testing may also have produced inconsistent force/displacement profiles, either within a population of testers, or even within a single tester as the tester became physically or mentally fatigued. Conventional automated or robotic testing for capacitive touch interfaces may have similarly been limited by accuracy and speed issues, but also by inconsistent force/displacement profiles, calibration and registration issues, and the cost of robotic testers. Additionally, conventional automated or robotic testing for capacitive touch interfaces may have experienced issues associated with substituting simulated touch events for actual touches. Conventional automated or robotic devices may have been single touch devices that performed slower than manual testers and that did not provide true end-to-end testing. Thus, capacitive touch screen interface testing has suffered from slow, inaccurate, and expensive testing that may not have produced true end-to-end testing.
Conventional general purpose robots may provide a flexible, programmable positioning system that excels at moving devices in a large three dimensional envelope at arbitrary attack angles. These general purpose robots may provide highly repeatable actions at fast speeds with coordinated motions. These attributes, while desirable for certain applications, may make conventional general purpose robots inappropriate for high accuracy touch testing of capacitive touch interfaces.